Me vs. the Douglas Firs

 There are two Douglas Fir trees at the north end of our house. They don't shade anything but our backyard. The trees are messy, I'm forever cleaning up needles, cones, and the occasional branch. The roses I wanted to plant along the fence failed to thrive due to lack of sun & all the needles.

I found them irritating & complained about them a lot. Then we had a horrible storm and the winds were so strong they were actually bending over the roof of the house & scraping off shingles & flinging them everywhere.

While we were fixing the roof I started talking about cutting the trees down. This is not usual for me. I pretty much always side with the tree & want to keep them.

In a strange turn of events my husband wanted to keep them. He's not usually pro-tree. We went back and forth about the trees a long time.

Then during another storm the trees shit a branch through the roof right over where I usually sit. It didn't go all the way through the ceiling, but I was convinced the trees were trying to kill me.

Which is only fair since I was considering doing the same to them.

I started paying attention and figured out that my squirrel friends live in those trees. Along with birds, raccoons, possums, and probably more. The squirrels also ate the seeds from the cones.

I also did some research & found other plants I could plant along the fence under the trees and I'm working on creating a food forest.

We came to uneasy truce. I stopped talking about cutting them down and they stopped trying to spear me with branches.

Then, I got a book about charming dryads & I thought "aha, I'll make friends with the trees" using the exercises in the book. They declined to be charmed. They're ok with the way things stand. For now. I did the exercises with the apple tree instead. The Douglas Firs are paying attention. We might be friends yet.